A Selective repeat ARQ protocal for parallel Channels and its resequencing analysis

Abstract

A communications system in which multiple parallel channels are available to carry traffic from a transmitter to a receiver is considered, and an extension of the selective-repeat automatic repeat request (SR-ARQ) protocol that dynamically assigns packets to channels for each (re)transmission is presented. Because of selective retransmission, packets arrive at the receiver out of order and must be stored in a resequencing buffer. A queueing model for the resequencing buffer is constructed. The generating function of the buffer occupancy and the packet-delay distribution are derived, and procedures for simplifying the computation are presented. The dynamic assignment scheme is compared with, and shown to have performance superior to, a static assignment scheme.